Here's a try at it. Biggest challenge was the soft focus. Then the flat lighting and crop needed to be addressed next. It wouldn't pass scrutiny on a large print, but it might get by on a smaller print.

Here's a try at it. Biggest challenge was the soft focus. Then the flat lighting and crop needed to be addressed next. It wouldn't pass scrutiny on a large print, but it might get by on a smaller print.

Mike

I think that this version is the best. However, it is also a lesson learned the hard way. The shot reminds me of my early bird pictures. They suffered from one major problem: using too short of a lens. And this has one real solution: use a longer lens. (Another solution, getting closer, does not work with most birds.) In my case, I use a 150-600 zoom, almost always at 600. My lens is pretty sharp at 600 so I solved that problem of softness in the original post. It also gives a very nice bokeh.

The picture has another issue. The washed out sky is a symptom of shooting from the wrong angle. If you can, either get above the bird or move around so you get a darker background. I would not hold my breath that the bird will stay around long enough for you but that is another story. Fortunately, this tight crop makes up for being in a poor vantage point. This kind of lighting is probably the best for birds and flowers because it does not give shadows and too much contrast. You can always make the picture snappier if you start with a raw and add a bit of clarity, tone and contrast.

Two final thoughts. In the more loosely cropped pictures, I would straighten the picture since the tilted post is annoying, at least to me. And, as a final touch, I would add a little negative vignette to make the bird pop more.

Now that several responses have been made, I want to show a comparison. Not every file was posted with the same crop / image resolution, so these compared thumbnails are not exactly the same. Those that looked at a vertical crop, I think compared to my own landscape view, they had the better approach. When I got the idea yesterday to clip out thumbnails, the idea was to look at the different approaches to the WB challenge of the original. What also caught my eye was the sharpening and / or the balance of sharpening to noise clean-up. These crops give an opportunity to look at the grain of the background, the details of the feathers / eye, and whether any noise lies in the shadow of the white body under the wing.

I brought these together not to criticize, but to show the spectrum of results and differing approaches from the same RAW starting point. Those that tried for more detail of the bird showed some good results, where honestly, my initial thought was the file was a "delete and move to next". Their work revealed more detail than I saw in the file, revealing ideas to me.

Apologies in any errors in the tags to the various editors. The attachment is full sized; you should be able to download and zoom into the details and scroll across each thumbnail.

Now that several responses have been made, I want to show a comparison. Not ever file was posted with the same crop / image resolution, so these compare thumbnails are not exactly the same. Those that looked at a vertical crop, I think compared to my own landscape view, they had the better approach. When I got the idea yesterday to clip out thumbnails, the idea was to look at the different approaches to the WB challenge of the original. What also caught my eye was the sharpening and / or the balance of sharpening to noise clean-up. These crops give an opportunity to look at the grain of the background, the details of the feathers / eye, and whether any noise lies in the shadow of the white body under the wing.

I brought these together not to criticize, but to show the spectrum of results and differing approaches from the same RAW starting point. Those that tried for more detail of the bird showed some good results, where honestly, my initial thought was the file was a "delete and move to next". Their work revealed more detail than I saw in the file, revealing ideas to me.

Apologies in any errors in the tags to the various editors. The attachment is full sized; you should be able to download and zoom into the details and scroll across each thumbnail.

Now that several responses have been made, I want to show a comparison. Not every file was posted with the same crop / image resolution, so these compared thumbnails are not exactly the same. Those that looked at a vertical crop, I think compared to my own landscape view, they had the better approach. When I got the idea yesterday to clip out thumbnails, the idea was to look at the different approaches to the WB challenge of the original. What also caught my eye was the sharpening and / or the balance of sharpening to noise clean-up. These crops give an opportunity to look at the grain of the background, the details of the feathers / eye, and whether any noise lies in the shadow of the white body under the wing.

I brought these together not to criticize, but to show the spectrum of results and differing approaches from the same RAW starting point. Those that tried for more detail of the bird showed some good results, where honestly, my initial thought was the file was a "delete and move to next". Their work revealed more detail than I saw in the file, revealing ideas to me.

Apologies in any errors in the tags to the various editors. The attachment is full sized; you should be able to download and zoom into the details and scroll across each thumbnail.

Fantastic idea, thanks so much for doing this, Paul. Cropping, sharpness and white balance are personal choices and these comparisons show some of the ways we can express ourselves in pp while still emphasizing reality over artistic or interpretive.

Would appreciate any help making this photo pop some more....cloudy day, shot hand-held at 30 ft or so. Seems to be a problem of mine that skies always look washed out. Don't know if it's my eyes or my skills? Canon 60D with a Tamron 18 - 400 lens.

here you go glad to help out. edit down in Lightroom corrected white balance used camera faithful profile adjusted highlights, shadows, white and black, used brush with automask to brighten and sharpen the bird. also cropped image, overall sharpened and added a vignette

here you go glad to help out. edit down in Lightroom corrected white balance used camera faithful profile adjusted highlights, shadows, white and black, used brush with automask to brighten and sharpen the bird. also cropped image, overall sharpened and added a vignette

Welcome. I do like that you have a blurred background and I find birds always an interesting subject. Not sure what story you want to tell, but I tried cropping a little more from the top to reduce the sky. Then in Adobe Camera Raw I used: white balance, opened up shadows, opened up whites, used a bit of clarity and saturation, HSL luminosity, then a small amount of adjustment brush on the bird and darkened some of the light sky in PS-CC. Hope to see more of your images. Bev

Welcome. I do like that you have a blurred background and I find birds always an interesting subject. Not sure what story you want to tell, but I tried cropping a little more from the top to reduce the sky. Then in Adobe Camera Raw I used: white balance, opened up shadows, opened up whites, used a bit of clarity and saturation, HSL luminosity, then a small amount of adjustment brush on the bird and darkened some of the light sky in PS-CC. Hope to see more of your images. Bev

Would appreciate any help making this photo pop some more....cloudy day, shot hand-held at 30 ft or so. Seems to be a problem of mine that skies always look washed out. Don't know if it's my eyes or my skills? Canon 60D with a Tamron 18 - 400 lens.

Here is my cut on this image done in ON1 Photo Raw 2019. I would have preferred to use DXO PhotoLab Elite but it doesn't support Canon's mraw and sraw formats. Is there is particular reason which you didn't shoot in full raw? They are not the same.

In any case, to achieve this in ON1, I used the warm haze reducer which uses two filters, one to increase dynamic contrast, the other, a lighting filter, called Sunshine. I then used the auto tone feature which reduced highlights and increased midtones and shadows. I added a small additional amount of sharpening and straightened the horizon which also required a small crop. Finally, I use a local adjustment only over the birds body to further increase the structure and reduce the haze so that it popped more with better defined feather detail. If you use ON1 I will be happy to send you screen shots of the settings.